a third-year teacher's escapades in the realm of the public high school. sometimes witty. sometimes sad. sometimes angry. always exhausted. it's a bumpy ride, but i wait for the moments that make it worth it.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Miss me??

I took a "brief" hiatus from blogging. I got overwhelmed by end-of-the-year work (i.e. even more term papers), and lately I've been working on wedding preparations, as fiance and I have decided to move the wedding up to November.

Anyway, I'm making a promise right now to you (and especially myself) to blog at least three times a week because I know I'll need that habit once school starts. I need the catharsis this blog brings me. Plus, I love getting feedback from all of you.

Besides wedding preparations and such, I've been really researching using podcasts and wikis in the classroom. I'm really interested in including more technology in my students' education next year, but I'm really finding it difficult to find good examples of podcasts. Many are password protected to insure student privacy and safety, which is understandable, but it makes it difficult to find examples. I've so far only been to the library and Googled it. After I finish writing this, I will be exploring the blogosphere.

I'm teaching my lower-tracked freshmen again next year. I'm really happy about that because I've developed a really strong curriculum for that class. I've been tweaking it lately, as I will be teaching a different novel from last year. I'll be doing Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, which is really exciting for me because I can tie it into the short story (by showing the students how authors flesh out stories but use a similar format to create a novel) and the epic. By the end the students will be showing me how TI and the Odyssey are related (that's one of the goals anyway).I also have two new preps, which should be interesting. I've got two different tracks of sophomores. I really love the novels taught the sophomore year, and the curriculum focuses more on speech rather than writing, which will be a load off grading-wise. Plus, I love a new challenge. For the next month or so, these are the classes I will really be focusing on preparing for. I feel very confident with my freshmen class planning, so I would like to be as confident with my sophomore classes.

This was sort of a dodgy return to blogging. I'm out of practice. It will get better, promise.

9 comments:

Yes, I missed you. Didn't know what had happened, but I am glad you were just planning a wedding. It should finally be cool enough to wear a wedding gown by November, don't you think? Glad you are back.

On my trip, my wife and I met this wonderful young woman who sounded a lot like you. She said she loved teaching thoselower-track kids that nobody else wants. One student told her that she was the first teacher who really ever tried to teach him anything. She said it's a great feeling when that happens, but then two weeks later, he called her a f---ing bitch, and threw a chair at her. She still loves it, though. I told her the same thing I told you about a year ago: I think you people are worth your weight in gold!

I love my speech classes for that exact reason -- the grading is not as complicated. Especially when I'm smart enough to remember to set up the rubric well in advance. There is something superfun about checking checkboxes and circling numbers with the occasional comment here and there. (And being done with grading at the end of the class period is hard to beat, as well!!)

Check out wikispaces.com -- I think they're still doling out education-use wiki, uh, spaces with some privacy controls and whatnot. I snagged a couple last year, am going to find some time in the next couple of weeks to jump into 'em and finagle some utility for next year's classes.